


If company should come

by thewondersmith



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:56:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewondersmith/pseuds/thewondersmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Eugene are snowed in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If company should come

**Author's Note:**

  * For [doodledinmypants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doodledinmypants/gifts).



> Written for the Zombies, Write! fic exchange for the lovely [Radio Eugene](radio-eugene.tumblr.com) over on Tumblr.

Eugene isn’t really a fan of winter.

Scratch that, he hates winter. _Hates_ it. He’s had friends who wore the cold in their bones, like some ridiculous Narnian badge of honour, but despite whatever growing up in Canada might suggest, he’s never had much tolerance for it. Cold, dry air and thin sun. Snow. _Parkas_. He can quote _A Song of Ice and Fire_ , but that’s about it. He doesn’t do the cold. He just doesn’t.

In fact, prior to the end of the world, Eugene would spend November through to March bouncing around the Southern Hemisphere. He’d go wherever work would take him. He’d been lucky. He had parents who understood if he couldn’t make it home in time for the holidays-- who understood, albeit tenuously, the importance of staying as close as possible to the equator. One of his best New Years was spent in Cape Town, eating _koeksisters_ and getting sunburned with a group of Texan expats. He’d fallen in love in Sydney, where the sky was so blue it hurt to look at, and the water was warm and clear and nothing like the coast back home, and he’d had his heart broken in Argentina, by a boy with dark, sad eyes and the hands of an artist. It had hurt, but that sort of thing is just easier to handle at temperatures higher than 20° C.

Not that winter doesn’t have its charm, of course; he’s always been fond of Christmas in London (at least in theory). He can even appreciate a good old fashioned snow day, provided he’s within ten feet of a space heater.

But this. This is fucking ridiculous.

He and Jack have been snowed in for the past three days, and while Eugene’s glad that they’d been able to find shelter in a gas station just past Midhurst, being trapped for half a week while Hell freezes over outside is starting to drive him a little nuts. The plan had been to just wait it out until the storm eased off, something that seems less and less likely to ever actually _happen_ , and as much as Eugene wants to enjoy what Jack has happily dubbed ‘indoor camping’, it’s hard to appreciate the little things when Eugene is so cold that his teeth hurt.

Not that there aren’t upsides. They’ve been on the road for a while now and he knows that they’re lucky to have found this place at all; gas stations are usually a prime target for scavengers, and apart from the emptied cash register, this place was somehow miraculously left untouched. If they’re extra lucky, he plans on checking to see if there’s any fuel left over once the weather clears up. Also, this is a gas station, which at least means they won’t run out of food any time soon.

Downside: It’s gas station food.

Upside: Jack will apparently eat anything.

Downside: So will the zoms, and contrary to whatever _28 Days_ had lead them to believe, shamblers aren’t actually all that bothered by a little frostbite. Every once in awhile, they’ll hear a moan over the howling of the wind outside, and Jack will bolt up with W.G. in hand, and for a split-second, Eugene will think, _maybe this is it, maybe this is how we’ll go down._ He tries not to let himself think that for long, though; just busies himself with checking and rechecking the perimeter, and by the time he’s sure the barriers will hold, he’s mostly forgotten about how all it’d take is for one of them is one slip up, one missed watch, one scratch, for everything to go horribly wrong.

“Eugene,” says a voice, very close to his ear. “Ground Control to Major Woods. You’re doing that thing again.

He startles and accidentally elbows Jack in the chest, who winces a little before huffing out a laugh and pulling his jacket around himself tighter. At this distance, Eugene can hear Jack’s teeth chattering a little, and his cheeks are flushed pink with the cold.

“Sorry,” he says. “Wait, what thing?”

“That _thing_. You know, where you zone out and disappear into your mind palace. You’ve been staring at the doors for the past five and a half minutes. It’s like you’re trying to summon zoms with your brain. It’s starting to get a little creepy.”

Eugene blinks. He doesn’t think he has a mind palace.  He thinks about saying so, but Jack is looking at him with this strange mixture of fondness and concern, and Eugene’s not entirely sure if he likes that look on Jack’s face.  Jack should be smiling. He’s too young to look this worried and this tired.

“And now you’re staring at me,” Jack says, and tucks his hands into his sleeves. “Great.”

“Sorry,” Eugene says again, but Jack’s shaking his head before he even hits the second syllable, and Eugene can’t quite bring himself to protest as a warm arm wraps around his shoulders to start tugging him over towards the fire they’d lit in the middle of the room.

“Don’t be. Just come and get some sleep, okay? You’ve been up for the past two days. You’re driving yourself crazy here.”

“I’m fine,” Eugene starts to say, but Jack’s already shaking his head again, and Eugene tells himself he’s not disappointed when Jack lets him go to gather up the last few remaining copies of House and Garden to dump on the fire. The smell of burning magazines is thick and acrid but it barely registers anymore, and Eugene wonders, absently, if it’s true that burning coloured ink leads to a buildup of creosote in the air. There’d been a house-fire down the street from him when he was a kid, and he remembers his parents saying something about creosote in the chimney. Dying in a fire, whilst trapped in a blizzard, in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. He’s pretty sure that if Alanis Morissette were still alive, she’d appreciate that level of irony.

“Eu _gene_ ,” Jack is saying, and Eugene blinks when Jack shakes his sleeping bag at him. “Seriously, it’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes. C’mon, River Tam. In you get.”

“I’m not a kid, you know,” Eugene says, sounding all of seven years old as he sinks into worn-out warmth of his sleeping bag, but Jack just makes a soothing noise and nods as he pulls his own sleeping bag a little closer to Eugene’s.

“Of course you’re not. Come on, get some sleep. I’ll wake you up when it’s time for your watch, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And do actually sleep this time, alright?”

“I said _okay_.”

Jack huffs out another laugh, his breath still visible despite the fire, and reaches out again to pull W.G. a bit closer. His hair’s falling into his face (really should get that cut, Eugene thinks to himself), and his lips are a just little blue from the cold. They look soft, and for a second, Eugene kind of wishes that he could kiss him. He tells himself that’s just the cold talking though, and the lack of sleep, and the biological imperative to cling to people in times of stress, but then Jack’s settling down next to him again, reaching a warm, calloused hand out to curl against Eugene’s wrist, and when Eugene finally does fall asleep, he dreams of summers in Bali and the freckles on the back of Jack’s neck.

 


End file.
